In a corner of Chinatown Complex Food Centre – the corner hawkers there jokingly call “the Death Valley” because it is far from the centre’s nexus – is a wanton noodle stall.

A young man is hard at work behind the stove, tossing noodles with aplomb. Two elderly men are milling around the stall. They call themselves his “assistants” and they certainly look the part. They wash dishes, take orders and even prepare the noodles when the young man’s hands are full.

In reality, they are the stall owners.

Sky Kam hard at work making wanton noodles for his early morning customers.

On the morning Salt&Light visits, there is a steady enough stream of customers. A number of them must be regulars because the elderly men call out to them with hearty greetings.

As the customers wait for their order of old-school wanton mee with springy yellow noodles, fresh-made char siu (barbecue pork) and meaty dumplings, the two older men share interesting nuggets of information about their clientele.

There is the fitness instructor who works nearby and comes for his daily fix of carbs. There is the senior citizen who lives in the estate who has become a familiar face. The woman with intricate tattoos running up her arms runs a neighbouring noodle stall.

Jimmy Loh and two of his regular customers who are personal trainers and run a fitness centre nearby.

For S$4.50, you can get a bowl of either wanton noodle soup or dry wanton noodles.

But this is not your usual wanton noodle stall: Behind the simple business is the tale of a band of brothers whose hearts for the underserved collide with their love of Singapore’s hawker culture and find their expression in a social enterprise called New Hope Noodles.

A business 20 years in the making  

The idea started with Jimmy Loh, now 72. It was 2021, during the height of the COVID pandemic, when he felt the pull to start a food delivery business.

Jimmy in front of the specially designed shutters of the New Hope Noodles stall.

“Hawker food is a basic need and it can reach out to all people. When I worked overseas, waimai (food delivery) was a big thing even before food delivery platforms appeared.

“So, I had been thinking of a hawker food-related business for 20 years. But I was a corporate man then and I didn’t have the right partner.”

But in 2021, he was semi-retired from his job as a clean tech consultant and free to pursue his dream. His aim was never about making money: He wanted to start a social enterprise.

He desired to help hawkers by offering them an alternative to existing delivery platforms that were charging high commissions. He also thought he could hire the elderly who had no jobs to be deliverymen. During COVID, hawkers were hard-hit by loss of income due to the frequent closures; Jimmy wanted to sustain them and hawker culture as well.

He knew he could not do this alone. So he called on his band of brothers, four friends he has known for decades. That was how Edward Ding, 68, came into the picture: Jimmy and Edward worship together at Bartley Christian Church. Victor Lim, 65, was another church friend who was pulled in. Sam Lee, 58, was included because Jimmy had been his cell group leader for six years when they both worked in China. All four are all retired or semi-retired.

(Left to right) Jimmy, Sam, Edward, Victor and Sky bonding over a meal.

“The time was right. They all wanted to do something. Our common love for God and for people brought us together,” said Jimmy.

More waiting ahead

Their original idea was to tender for a stall at a hawker centre and work their delivery business from there.

Edward told Salt&Light: “We were looking for something manageable that won’t cost us too much if we don’t succeed.”

Sam added: “We wanted a stall because we were more interested in the social aspect. One of our core missions is outreach.

“We wanted to (get to) know other stall owners at the hawker centre and deliver their food to areas within 1km.”

Thus began the bidding process for a hawker stall, but the bids failed one by one.

“Three years,” said Jimmy of how long they waited.

But the men, seasoned entrepreneurs among them, were not discouraged.

“We don’t see that as doors closing. From a business point of view, this is normal. Things don’t come into place immediately,” said Sam.

Pieces falling into place

Then something happened early in January 2024 that caused them to pivot on their original idea.

Victor serves in a prison ministry and a man he was ministering to was released from prison. The young man, Sky Kam, wanted to start his own fishball kway teow (rice noodles) stall.

That gave the foursome another idea: Why not start a social enterprise to provide work for ex-offenders since Victor knew several ex-offenders? But while Sky had some experience in F&B, he knew nothing about making fishball noodles. Again, Victor rose to the occasion.

Said Edward: “Victor remembered there was another ex-offender whose father had been running two successful wanton noodle stalls for over 30 years.

“Victor decided to ask this father if he could help.”

The older man readily agreed when approached. He had seen how the prison ministry had helped his son and was keen to return the favour. He taught Sky to make wanton noodles, and supplied the char siu (barbecued pork), wanton (meat dumplings) and sauces.

Freshly made char siu supplied by their mentor – the veteran wanton noodle hawker who taught the team to make the dish.

The handmade wantons, plumb and meaty, are the stars of the dish.

“We had a lot of favour,” Sam noted.

Jimmy agreed: “It was from the Lord. In our corporate experience, it had never been like this.”

Though they had thus far not been successful in their bid for a stall in their ideal area – Chinatown – the four went ahead to plan as if they had. The men signed up for courses on food hygiene so they could assist at the stall, learnt how to run a hawker stall and spent a lot of time just sitting at hawker centres to understand the culture and business.

Then in November 2024, it finally happened: They got their stall at Chinatown Complex Food Centre.

New beginnings, New Hope

They had mere weeks to get the business up and running. They picked December 18, 2024 to open the stall.

“It was a Wednesday,” Edward told Salt&Light. “We picked Wednesday because our mentor’s rest days are Wednesdays. Then he could come help us. Any earlier, we were not ready. Any later, it would be Christmas.”

Five months in and business is doing reasonably well. Although they had no publicity, food bloggers were reviewing the stall just weeks after it opened.

Leading up to opening day, they met with challenge after challenge but also blessing upon blessing.

When they went to the shop to buy the equipment for the stall, they found that it was permanently closed. But as they were leaving, they bumped into one of the shop’s former worker round the corner. This person got a salesperson from another shop to give them a quote for the equipment.

The quote was more than they could afford. But the same person recommended them a second-hand store where they found a stove that fit the dimensions of their stall to a T.

The new stall owners managed to get the stove two days before D-Day along with the boiler and a counter for utensils. Everything fell into place just in time.

“Even as we built up the business, I could see God’s hand in it,” said Edward.

The business is a venture among the four men – Jimmy, Edward, Victor and Sam – who each put in equal share. They christened the stall New Hope (新望) because of their mission to give new hope to ex-offenders. In Mandarin, the name is also a homophone of the phrase 兴旺 which means “to prosper” or “to thrive”.

On the first day of business, New Hope sold 100 bowls of noodles, far beyond their expectations especially since they had done no publicity beyond telling family and friends.

Said Jimmy: “We were all excited. We said, ‘Wow, Lord! This is Your hand. We have got to rely on You, not our own expertise.’”

But there would be more excitement on Day One. After the last bowl of noodles had been served, they discovered that the stall’s piping had not been properly fitted. This caused the PVC pipes to melt from the heat of the stove. Edward got down to solving the problem on his own, despite knowing “very little” about piping.

“I’m a hands-on person,” he explained. “I see, I pray about it and I start unplugging things. I don’t know how to do things. That’s why I pray more.”

He managed to solve the problem and business carried on without a hitch the next day.

Dishing out noodles and hope

Within its first two months, New Hope Noodles was pulling in enough sales to cover the S$7,000 needed for operational costs, which include Sky’s salary, rent, utilities, cleaning costs and the ingredients.

The team had to learn from the other hawkers in the food centre that the month of March is traditionally a slow month for business.

“We are not in it to get something out of it for ourselves. We are all prepared to write off the start-up cost,” said Edward.

Although this is the first time these friends are working together, they are quite professional about the division of labour. Jimmy and Edward are the ones usually at the stall helping Sky. Victor manages the finances while Sam is in charge of planning and public relations.

Said Edward: “We are quite amicable. We ride on each other’s strengths. If there are decision to be made, we take it to a vote.

“We are not just Christians. I see in them a love for God in their different ways.”

Added Sam: “God has to be the focus. If we don’t go to God first about something, there would be bigger arguments.

“Jimmy and Victor are used to running big organisations. Edward is very hands-on. Of course, we are all opiniated. But when we come together, we humble ourselves.”

While New Hope Noodles is still a fledgling business, the men already have plans to scale up the social enterprise to help more ex-offenders.

“We can start another stall doing the same thing or use the model to start a stall selling something else. Or we can work upstream and look at the supply chain, (maybe) start to produce our own wanton and char siu,” said Sam.

The plan is for Sky and others like him to take over the stall and run it as their own businesses.

The noodle business is not just for helping ex-offenders, it is a place where the Gospel is shared as well. Jimmy and Edward take the time to get to know the other stall owners and their customers.

Edward, who is involved in his church’s Mandarin service, speaks Mandarin and dialects, allowing him to share his faith in the heart languages to the denizens of Chinatown Complex.

A grandmother Jimmy struck up a conversation with told him she had been praying for her son who had passed away. That gave Jimmy the opportunity to ask to pray for her as well.

He told Salt&Light: “When I worked in a corporate company, I got to meet a lot of top businessmen, but I didn’t have the time to talk to them, ask about them and their families.

“Now I come to this hawker centre, I sit down and talk to people and hear their stories. Now I know why Jesus came as a humble man – so that He could talk to the ordinary man. This experience opened my eyes to see how God reaches out to everyone.”

Two weeks before the Salt&Light interview, Jimmy shared the Gospel with a 77-year-old regular customer. The man prayed to receive Christ right at the stall.

He said: “People come to you. You don’t need to chase them.”

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